Actor, writer and director Jonathan Biggins announced the winners of the satirical Orwell Awards at the Australian Press Freedom Dinner on Friday, April 28. The winners were selected from a swag of contenders, nominated by members of the Australian media for excellence in stifling freedom of expression. AWB and DFAT took the Australian Orwell while US Vice President Dick Cheney was the stand out nominee for the international Gold Orwellian. Judges’ comments follow.

Established in 2003, the tongue-in-cheek Orwell Awards accord a dubious honour to supreme violators of press freedom in Australia and abroad. The satirical awards are nominated by members of the Australian media and are run in conjunction with World Press Freedom Day, celebrated internationally on May 3. Nominations may pertain to an individual event or an ongoing campaign to keep the wool firmly over everyone’s eyes.

The 2006 Orwell judges were Gold Walkley Award winner Neil Chenoweth, Walkley Advisory Board member and ABC reporter Heather Ewart, and Walkley Trustees Christopher Warren and Mark Ryan. 

And the winners are …

Australian Orwell

Australian Wheat Board (AWB) and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) for excellence in deceit, deception and determined distraction which saw nearly $300 million in kickbacks funnelled to Iraq while Australia was preparing to go to war.

This well deserved commendation recognises a superb team effort that created Australia’s biggest international scandal, from the AWB executives who spoke no evil, to the DFAT officials and their masters who went above and beyond the call of duty to see no evil, to the Australian public and the media who as a result heard no evil. Actually we heard nothing at all.

In a strong ensemble production AWB chairman Trevor Flugge’s performance was a highlight, with his marvellous Baghdad holiday snaps and the dodgy hearing aid that kept him from hearing anything was amiss. Michael Long, AWB’s global sales chief, drew praise for his handy skills with a wheat executive’s best friend, the M16 automatic rifle, as well as his code name, Proton Man, used in emails when he was spying on the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Special merit also to Australian diplomat Bronte Moules who passed on Canadian claims about AWB kickbacks, but apparently forgot to mention they were paid as transport fees; to Foreign Minister Alexander Downer who was worried but not alarmed; and Trade Minister Mark Vaile, who kept on making public statements defending the wheat exporter, once he’d cleared them with the AWB.

Through six years of UN sanctions, a war and the Volker inquiry, our heroes just kept on trucking.

Gold Orwellian (International)

US Vice President Dick Cheney. The pin up boy for the US National Rifle Association snatched the Gold Orwell from a packed field of contenders with his impressive effort in shooting his friend Harry Whittington, 78.

Cheney peppered his campaign contributor in the face, neck and shoulders with birdshot and then waited a full four days before ending his stubborn silence and admitting it was his fault. The media was only notified that the quail hunt had gone terribly wrong 24 hours after the incident after a local newspaper stumbled across the story.

It was a neat touch by the man who was one of the staunchest supporters of the media disinformation about weapons of mass destruction that triggered the Iraq war.

Last year his chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice over a 2003 leak that sought to discredit a trenchant critic of the Iraq war, former Ambassador Joseph C Wilson, by revealing that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. So far the only person to do jail time over the leaks has been former New York Times journalist Judith Miller, who was jailed for 85 days for refusing to detail a confidential conversation she had with Libby.

Cheney, who unlike Paul Keating has never claimed only to have one shot in the locker, vowed to return to hunting.